CHAPTER VII. HON. JOHN BRISBEN WALKER, ON HOMESTEAD.
It is the good fortune of only a few to be possessed of the remarkable genius and imbued with the spirit of prophecy to predict coming events with the certainty and accuracy of the Hon. J. Brisben Walker, who, in an article published in the Cosmopolitan for September, 1892, foretold, with wonderful force, the rock upon which the Republican bark was drifting. It was not until the manuscript of this volume was almost completed that attention was called to Mr. Walker’s article. To the credit of journalists, and writers generally, be it said that no class or profession are as willing to recognize the ability of their brothers as are the members of that profession whose aim it is to foretell the future, to weigh the evidence of public opinion, prognosticate as to the result thereof, and record the events that transpire, either in accordance with their prophecies or contrary thereto. To Mr. Walker be accorded the honor of justly appreciating the suppressed indignation of the people, and of sounding the warning note to the wealthy, prior to November 8, 1892. To the writer of this volume little credit is due for merely recording that which, since the result of the election is known, is perfectly apparent. Had Mr. Walker looked into the future and been blessed with prophetic vision, he could not have told, more clearly than he has, the forces that were operating in September, and which produced the results so surprising to many in November.
HENRY C. FRICK,
Manager Carnegie Works, Homestead, Pa.
While Mr. Walker has taken Homestead for his text, the application of his article to the condition of the people of the Union generally is so apparent that each man for himself may shift the scene and make it applicable to his own little community. In every village, town, city, or county in the Union, is some one man, or some set of men, who arrogate to themselves a certain superiority resulting from the accumulation of wealth in their hands; this accumulation, having arisen from the inequality in the distribution of the increased wealth of the nation, being in many cases purely accidental, and in others the result of the phenomenal development of the resources of this country, coupled with the wonderful spirit of invention shown in the land in the last thirty years. Mr. Walker takes Carnegie and Frick as types of the class to which the people object so strenuously. The building of a church, or the founding of a library, is but a small price to pay, in the opinion of the American people, for the right to assume privileges detrimental to the growth and continuance of that doctrine so dear to the hearts of the masses—the equality of man. Mr. Walker entitles his article, “The Homestead Object Lesson,” and begins by saying:—
“An affair like that at Homestead educates the public mind rapidly; more rapidly in a month than ten years of books and pamphlets. In the face of death, men stop to think. What led to this? What does it mean? What is the remedy? And when the daily journal gives in one column the picture of Cluny Castle, or the magnificent pile from which the Lyttons have gone out to admit partner Phipps from the Homestead mills, and in another sketches showing the dead and dying upon the banks of the Monongahela, the contrast is so sharp that one draws a quick breath of discomfort, and even the most conservative, whose manhood is stronger than his love of dollars, admits that something is wrong.”
If a man in the walk of life of Mr. Walker shall “draw a quick breath of discomfort” at the scene he pictures, because his “manhood is stronger than his love of dollars,” how utterly obvious it ought to have appeared, and should now appear, to those possessed of wealth, that an appeal for the support of that class who, as American citizens, not only possess an abundance of manhood, but, in addition thereto, are sufferers by the wrongs or conditions written of by Mr. Walker, was and is useless.
“Lovers of the Republic may well tremble at this exhibition, so closely resembling the evil days when rich Romans surrounded themselves by hired bands of fighting bullies. True, our modern rich man does not parade the streets, surrounded by his gladiators. He sits in a secret office, removed from danger, and, in communication with the telegraph wires, orders his army concentrated from many States by rapid transit, and moves it unexpectedly upon his private foes. There is lacking that personal courage which gave a half-way excuse to the Roman who, sword in hand, shared the dangers of the fight. But the risk to the Republic is all the greater from these modern methods. For, if a man may hire 300 poor devils ready to shoot down their brothers in misery, there is no reason why he may not hire 10,000.”
There are not a few of us who will recall the natural indignation aroused in our bosoms while witnessing that noble impersonator of Virginius, John B. McCullough; the idea of the degradation to which we were drifting, by the possibility of the existence of an aristocracy, whose hired bullies and parasitical clients acted as panders to the worst passions of man. If it be possible to adopt the old Roman method of hiring bullies and assassins, and maintaining paid private armies, how very possible to come to a condition similar to that so powerfully portrayed in Virginius! Lovers of the Republic, of honor, and virtue, may well tremble, at the bare possibility, vaguely imagined, but evidently more vivid to the minds of the masses, than was contemplated by those autocratic gentlemen who ordered their mercenaries to Homestead.
“There is another side to this matter. Raised up under the system which declares that any man has a right to control, without limit, the earth’s surface and its productions, or the labor of his fellow-men, Mr. Frick, doubtless, feels that he is performing a sacred duty in protecting his property at Homestead, by any means that the law permits. Thousands of good men held the same thought regarding their slaves, before and during the war. It really seemed to them a divine right of property, and all classes of the community to-day—learned ministers and professors, intelligent merchants, and high-minded men of all professions—hold that our system of distribution is not only legal, but fair, and authorized by the teachings of the Gospel.”
In the most lucid manner, Mr. Walker continues to give the causes of the existence of conditions conducive to the results which have been produced by the accumulation of wealth, and, in consequence, assumption of a superior social position by the possessors thereof:—
“Less than half a century ago the people of the United States were comparatively poor and the wealth of the country distributed with a near approach to equality, less than a dozen individuals having fortunes approaching the million mark. The laws had been made for the existing conditions of labor, and were, as a whole, of a satisfactory character. No one had yet dreamed of the marvelous inventions and discoveries of natural wealth which were to upset all the conditions of production, and make the succeeding fifty years a wealth-giving period, unprecedented in the history of the world. Anthracite and bituminous coals, petroleum, the cotton gin, the reaper, steam and electricity, with their thousand marvels, were suddenly emptied upon a community whose laws had been made for conditions the very opposite of those now existing.
“It is not to be wondered at that the American mind should seize upon the possibilities which old laws gave to individuals for grabbing these newfound treasures. They would have been more than human if they could have resisted the temptation, and besides, it must be recollected that the Christianity practised was of a perfunctory character, formal and nominal rather than real, and civilization just beyond the period of wild beast skin wearing. In fifty years the creation of wealth has become prodigious; the distribution of wealth has become frightful in its inequalities. The laws, which were beneficent for an agricultural and pastoral people, worked degradation and infamy in a manufacturing community. They permitted the few to grab the greater part of this new wealth. With great fortunes are coming upon the scene an unparalleled luxury upon the one hand, and a poverty upon the other, scarcely surpassed in the days when production did not equal one-tenth the present output. In the strife for wealth the law-making power was found to be a useful auxiliary. Judges were bought, senatorships were sold in the interests of railways and the great corporations; and within the last ten years we find wealth—not contented with the advantages which the laws, confessedly in its favor, give it—hiring private armies to give force to edicts allotting to the laborer a lesser share of the product.”
Experience and observation force the conviction upon our minds, that Mr. Walker is correct in his assumption that even the ministers believe that the distribution of wealth among the masses is not only legal, but fair, and authorized by the teachings of the Gospel. A little strange, however, is it for the teachers of the doctrine of Christianity to maintain principles so utterly at variance with those expressed by their divine Master: “If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor.”
“There is only one class to dispute this proposition. They are the toilers, whose labor is the immediate cause of the production of our wealth. We may say that there must be intelligence to direct, and that to the intelligence which takes advantage should come the gains. But Mr. Carnegie and Mr. Frick are proofs that in the ranks of labor itself there is intelligence to direct. Many Carnegies and many Fricks would spring up to-morrow if opportunity permitted. If one would study the justice of a system of political economy, let him surrender his vested rights of property and take his place among those whom the system crushes, whose labor it devours, and whose reward for labor is a bare, joyless existence. We who have the money can reason speciously regarding the justice of our laws, the excellence of our system of government. The laboring man can only groan in spirit. He has not hitherto had the power of his vote, notwithstanding our boasted representative government, because his brothers, in the agony which poverty brings, in their effort to relieve the hand-to-mouth miseries of their existence, have sold at each election this birthright for the merest taste of pottage.”
Fortunately, under the Australian system of voting, it was impracticable to buy Esau’s birthright with a delusive mess of pottage held out by the protected, wealth-accumulating, sham aristocrats.
“Everyone knows that this has been true, that the labor vote has never been a unit, that its purchasability has been one of the well-understood factors in ward politics, that there has been no combination, no united effort, no intelligent direction, no willingness to submit to leadership, and that there is to-day no probability of the vote of these people being cast at an early election for the objects in which they are so deeply concerned. The issues that are before the public in either of the great political parties for whose candidates the votes will be cast, are very largely those which concern the people of means and influence. Platforms are dictated with reference to Wall street, and the great corporations and the rich men who supply the sinews of political war.”
Fortunately, Mr. Walker’s prophecy has proved incorrect. There was a time in the very near future when the objects so sacred to them would outweigh any possible advantage that might accrue to their pocketbooks by voting with those who would impose the yoke of a class distinction upon our country. It was nearer the day of retribution than even Mr. Walker, farseeing as he has demonstrated himself to be, supposed. The 8th of November was to witness the vindication upon the part of the workman of his inherent right to exercise his prerogative as an American citizen, uninfluenced by mercenary motives. Almost without an error has Mr. Walker gauged the public feeling. It is pardonable, in one who is so much nearer right than the majority, to make one single error. None of us appreciated how full were the hearts of the workingmen, the poor, and those oppressed by wealth and stung by an attempted exhibition of the privileges accorded to “caste.”
“Nevertheless, there is a ground-current steadily moving across the continent. Workmen, who were wholly ignorant thirty years ago, are partly educated to-day. Within fifteen years, a highly-intelligent class has sprung up among the workmen themselves, and there are a few really able men who have been making efforts for their advancement. That man Powderly, for instance, is a statesman of a high order. He has capacity for organization, he has singleness of purpose, he has determination, and he has courage. And he is only one of a number. They have been educating their followers, and teaching them to unite upon certain simple propositions. It is like the fencing-master, who puts in the hands of his pupil the single-stick, before he confides to him the glittering rapier. There is talent enough among them to organize a movement more formidable than that of Spartacus. Thank God, they are men who love the Republic, and who hope for the elevation of their people through the evolution of the law.”
Mr. Walker could have gone on and called the attention of the wealthy to the fact that, while these men loved the Republic, they did not love the foreign spirit that pervaded the would-be upper classes. It is well that a man of Mr. Walker’s position should feel it incumbent upon him to compliment, or, more properly speaking, to duly appreciate, a man like Powderly. Mr. Powderly, were he not a statesman and a patriot, is possessed of dangerous powers; were it not for the great amount of virtue, honesty, and common-sense that resides in the bosoms of the masses, some dangerous, daring, and magnetic leader might spring into prominence and cause the overturning which Mr. Walker so ably depicts later in his article. Mr. Powderly, and men of his kind, have ever acted as the governing-power on this tremendous engine, called Labor, in this country. They have exhibited a degree of conservatism and consideration for the rights of the wealthy, as well as the rights of the laborer, which entitles them to the respect of all sound-minded Americans.
“Two things must always be borne in mind: First, that the laboring men have the majority, if they choose to exercise it, not only of votes, but of physical strength. Intelligence and cunning were, once upon a time, factors upon which the few rich could count to keep in subjection the many poor. The time is rapidly approaching when these will no longer avail. There is a prevailing thought that this must be a Republic, indeed, where all men shall be equal before the law; where the law will carefully guard the industrious man against the greedy man; where cunning will not place labor at the greatest of disadvantages; where labor will become honorable, and idleness contemptible; where effort will be expected from every citizen in the direction of his best talent, and where the needs of the unfortunate, through disease or inheritance, will be respected; in a word, the model government in which a near approach to the ideal Republic will be attained, an example set which the countries of Europe may well imitate. We have the opportunities here, with our rich territory, our great natural resources, and our population yet uncrowded, to do this. If we fail, the idea of a Republic may well be abandoned for the next 2,000 years.”
Forcefully is it called to the minds of the fortunate possessors of wealth, by Mr. Walker, that the poor are in possession of a superior physical force. It would be well for those who enjoy the protection accorded to them and their property by this vast population, made up largely of the laboring classes, to consider what a small percentage the “wealthy” represent in the mass of 65,000,000 people. Their pronounced minority becomes apparent whenever they oppose the will of that great majority, the “Common People.” Should it ever be necessary to arbitrate any question of difference by physical force, how absolutely unequal are the contending elements! Men like Mr. Powderly have ever sought to cast oil upon the turbulent waters occasioned by too much arrogance upon the part of the wealthy. It is not only equality before the law which the poor man prizes, but that equality which is rather of a sentimental than a legal nature. He recognizes no inequality as existing between the woman whom he honors as his wife and the woman whom men like Messrs. Carnegie and Frick may clothe in seal-skins and laces, and bedeck with jewels. It is not only before the law that the poor man desires to be equal. The sentimental portion of his nature is moved to create a difference, socially, resting only upon those natural inherent qualities, worth, merit, and virtue, and not that which has its foundation in the possession of wealth alone.
“That was a curious interview between the commandant of the militia, the gentleman born and bred—with an inheritance of belief regarding the rights to accumulate property, even if in so doing one crowded one’s fellow-mortal to the wall—and the iron-workers who constituted the Homestead committee. Gold-spectacled, practised in the art of snubbing and sure of the physical strength at his back, the officer was more than a match for the laborer, who in his turn was awed by his inherited respect for wealth and power. Chilled and overawed, the representatives of labor went down the hill from this unequal interview. The general in charge had neither the grace nor the will to recognize a labor association which embraced a membership large enough, if properly organized, to sweep out of existence the entire army of the United States. They must have reflected, as they went down the hill, these representatives of labor, that if a militia organization carried such weight, permitted such freezing dignity upon the part of a citizen towards other citizens, it might possibly be well for their interests to have a few thousand of their own men enrolled in this same militia. There is nothing to prevent a body of American citizens from organizing themselves as a militia organization with proper arms and equipments. There are enough workmen in Pittsburg and vicinity to give a hundred regiments of the full complement of ten companies of seventy men each, with as many more left over for onlookers at parades. Six months of hard drill such as the enthusiasm of these men would permit would leave them equal to the best of the Philadelphia troops. Does anyone believe for an instant that if there had been a hundred such regiments among the workingmen of Pittsburg, General Snowden would have declared that he could not recognize the existence of such a body of men as the Amalgamated Association?”
We will assume, with Mr. Walker, that the commandant of the troops sent to Pittsburg by the Governor of Pennsylvania, was a “gentleman bred.” About a man being born a gentleman, we may hold opinions at variance with Mr. Walker. Horses may exhibit the fact that they are thoroughbred, when intelligence in the shape of a jockey is perched upon their backs; but born gentlemen in America have never, as a rule, by their scintillating genius and danger-defying patriotism, carved out names upon the eternal monuments of the nation to rival the names of Clay, Webster, and Lincoln. We hope that the man put in command of the Pennsylvania militia was a “gentleman bred,” but the exhibition that he made of himself, while clothed with that brief authority, would not be conducive to the formation of such an opinion.
In his meeting with the citizens of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, who were contributing towards the payment of the taxes from which the expenses incurred by the State were to be defrayed, he did not conduct himself in a manner such as to make a shining example for those who shall command, in the future, the citizen-soldiery of the Republic. He seemed utterly oblivious to the fact that he came, not as a conquering hero, but as a private citizen, invested with a brief and circumscribed authority exercised for the greatest good to the greatest number in the prevention of lawlessness and violence and the peaceful solution of a local difficulty with which the Sheriff of the county appeared to be unable to contend. The arrogance assumed by this “gentleman bred” was not calculated to create any great amount of good feeling in the breasts of his fellow-citizens, to pacify whom he was sent by the Governor of his State. There would have been but slight loss of dignity upon his part to have allayed their anxiety by a little exercise of that “good breeding,” patience, and consideration for the feelings of others, which are supposed to be characteristics of the gentleman the world over. General Ulysses S. Grant, commander of the armies of the nation, as victor in a contest of four years’ duration, has set a magnificent example in the treatment of his vanquished but great opponent, Lee, by his courteous, kindly, and magnanimous behavior toward Lee and his vanquished legions whom Grant had so long faced and at last vanquished.
“I choose to ask this question as a reductio ad absurdum, in the hope that it will cause my own class, who have power and authority, to stop and reflect that perhaps it will be best to concede something in the way of law, to regulate this one-sided distribution of wealth, lest it should be regulated through bloodshed, or, what is more horrible still, should throw into power, through sheer brute force, elements which will bring our Republic to anarchy. If there could have been pointed out to the nobles of Louis XVI. the things which were liable to follow their arrogance, the children of these French rich would have cause for congratulation to-day.”
Mr. Walker says that he chooses to ask this of men of his class. He hardly means that. Men of his class, like himself, would have brains enough not to require the question. Mr. Walker doubtless refers, in speaking of men of his own class, to the wealthy, and to them it is well addressed and worthy of their careful attention. France had its 14th of July, which should have taught Louis XVI. and his nobles the lesson which it is hoped has been learned thoroughly by the rich of this country, as taught in the result of the election of November 8, 1892. These are but the premonitory symptoms of a terrible scourge that might sweep over our country. The poor may be robbed with impunity; the “Common People” will good-naturedly submit to a lot of snubbing; but it would be well for men accustomed to exhibit their impudence and assumption, to forego the snubbing process when brought in contact with the people, as General Snowden was, while commanding the military power of the State, as he did at Homestead. General Snowden might well be taken as a type of the “smart set” of Philadelphia, imitating the manners of the McAllister “smart set” of New York.
“The fact is, we have two separate worlds in this country. The man who lives in what is known as the world of society has no conception of what the world of labor is thinking. Their worlds are almost as distinct and as completely cut off from each other as if one had its capital at Kamtchatka, and the other at Terra del Fuego. The poor do injustice to the kindly-hearted people whose minds have been warped by the teachings of inheritance and by their environment of wealth; and the rich do not dream of the thoughts which fill the minds of the poor. It is a dangerous ignorance. These two factors are like the nitre and charcoal of gunpowder. Any stray spark may produce disastrous results. The laborer believes now that the law is gradually being altered to suit what he considers the equities of his position. Let him become fairly convinced that the government is for the few, that the military is but a means of carrying out schemes of aggrandizement by the rich, and that votes are bought or majorities counted out in the same interest, and the crucial hour of the Republic will at once have arrived.
“Can science do nothing towards the solution of these difficulties? Statistics show us that if we were all to labor, no one would want for anything, neither the necessities of life, nor reasonable pleasures, nor enjoyments. Again, is there any intelligent rich man, who would not wish his sons to labor? Who does not believe that labor, in moderation, brings happiness, if only that it gives a keener zest for recreation? Who does not believe that idleness brings mental and physical injury? Who, then, would wish for his children existence in a community where idleness is to be their lot? Is there any thinking man who can feel reasonably comfortable, when only a few blocks distant, thousands are eking out a dark existence by labor that extends, in many cases, over double the allotted number of hours, who have few pleasures, and fewer still of what we call the comforts of life?”
It is not simply that those not possessed of wealth may live within a few blocks of those who are possessed of wealth; it is not that their lives may be eked out in darkness; it is the crushing shame to them that their miserable existence is made still more hard to bear by the flaunted superiority, socially, of the possessors of wealth, who live a few blocks away. Poverty, when accompanied by none of the other and more objectionable features, is not so hard to bear. The poor man believes in the dignity of labor. He does not feel degraded by the fact that he may toil with his hands. He only feels a sense of shame, and his bosom only swells with wrath, when the disdainful dames of the wealthy class presume to snub or insult his wife, the sharer of his toil and privations. She is to him the light and life of even his miserable hovel, only a few blocks away from the wealthy; hence, the keener pang that he experiences when the one bright spot in his life, sacred to him, is invaded by snobbery and pretended class distinction.
“Yet wise laws could regulate much of this in the brief period of one generation. Lighten the burdens of taxation upon the poor, by letting those whose wealth is protected by the State chiefly furnish the means of subsistence for the State, at the same time offering a discouragement to the amassing of great wealth. The well-known expedient of income-tax would be a step in this direction. Take out of the control of private individuals the power to amass great fortunes, at the expense of the public, through the management of functions like railway, express, and telegraph, which are purely of a public character. Establish a system of currency, self-regulated, by means of postal savings banks; tax highly the unimproved properties which are held for purposes of speculation. Finally, let it be a recognized principle that when men employ many laborers, their business ceases to be purely a private affair, but concerns the State, and that disputes between proprietor and workmen must be submitted, not to the brute-force of so many Pinkerton mercenaries, but to arbitration.”
The espousal, by Mr. Walker, of a doctrine which, to most of the wealthy, is rank heresy,—an income tax,—is a step in the right direction. A graduated tax, to be regulated by the amount of income received and enjoyed by the taxpayer, would furnish a speedy, practicable, and just means, not only of preventing these vast accumulations in the hands of individuals, by accretions resulting from that part of their income which they are unable to spend, but it would also furnish a means whereby the Federal Government might be supported without the imposition of even the existing internal revenue tax, and only such protective tariff tax as would prove absolutely necessary to sustain our manufactures. It was a great step in the right direction, for the owner of such a prosperous magazine as the Cosmopolitan, the possessor of much of the world’s goods, to propose such an expedient for the relief of the people; especially when coupled with the suggestion that corporations, like those of the railroads, telegraph, et al., should not be controlled and managed for the profit of individuals. We should have fewer strikes, and much less labor trouble, if the Government controlled the great corporations who employ large numbers of laboring men.
This article is given prominence and so liberally quoted from—not alone from the intrinsic merit of the article and discernment of the writer in predicting the overthrow of plutocracy, and warning the rich against their insolence to those less-favored brothers, as far as worldly wealth is concerned,—but also, because of the position of the writer of the article; a man of brains, enterprise, energy, and wealth.
THE MISTAKE AT HOMESTEAD, PA.—JULY, 1892.